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Lee et al (Results- Analysis of the data focused on the country the…
Lee et al
Results- Analysis of the data focused on the country the children came from, the children's ages, and the particular stories they were responding to.
Story one (pro-social behaviour/ tell the truth about it): The two cultures showed no significant difference in their rating of pro-social behaviour. However, there was a significant interaction between age and culture as Canadian children gave similar ratings to truth telling at each age, whereas Chinese children rated truth telling less positively as age increased.
Story two (pro-social behaviour / tell a lie about it): The children in each culture and of each age rated the lie telling behaviour differently in the pro-social situation. Canadian children rated the lie-telling negatively, although this became less negative as age increased. For the Chinese children, they changed from rating the lie- telling negatively at age seven to rating it positively at age eleven.
Story three (anti-social behaviour / tell the truth about it): There was no significant difference between the children from Canada and China, with children from each culture rating truth telling very positively in the anti-social situation
Story four (anti-social behaviour / tell a lie about it): This time the significant difference was shown between age groups, with the negative ratings increasing with age irrespective of culture.
Qualitative data: Chinese children rated the character in the stories as negative if they admitted to doing a good deed. When asked why, they said the character was "wanting" or even "begging" the teacher for praise - this behaviour is discouraged. "One should not leave one's name after doing a good deed"
Independent variables
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Age of the child: 7 years old, 9 years old, or 11 years old
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Aims
To see if Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rated truth-telling and lie-telling in pro-social settings, where someone has done something good. ("Chinese children were predicted to rate truth telling in pro-social situations less positively and lie-telling in the same situations less negatively than Canadian children.")
To see if Chinese and Canadian children would differ in how they rated truth telling and lie telling in anti-social settings, where some has done something bad. ("...children of both cultures were expected to show similar moral evaluations of lie telling and truth telling related to anti-social behaviours.")
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Ethics
It can be assumed that ethical guidelines were adhered to. As Lee et al. explicitly thanks '....the participating children, their parents, and their schools for their cooperation and support', it can be assumed that consent for the children to take part was given by their parents. Presumably, the unequal amount of children from the two cultures (120 from China and 108 from Canada) could reflect at least some Canadian parents exercising their right to withdraw.
The stories that were read out to the children were accompanied by illustrations and ought not to have caused upset to the children, although in the case of two of them they did involve children being pushed to the ground and made to cry. In the study, children were seen individually, this may have made some of them uncomfortable.
Reliability
Internal reliability- They used a standardised procedure, with several controls. Stories were similar within each group
External reliability- With a reasonably large sample of children in each condition, it can be assumed that the sample was large enough to establish consistent effects.
Prodedure
The children were randomly allocated to either the social story or the physical story condition. They were then seen individually, and the first of all the rating chart was explained to them. When the children had to answer the questions, they could use the words, symbols, or sometimes both. Each child listened to all four physical stories or all four social stories. The meaning of the symbols on the chart was repeated each time the question was asked. The good and naughty meanings were alternated so that the researchers knew the child wasn't just saying the first option each time. The researchers also used counterbalancing by randomly allocating stories to one of two orders and then giving about half of the children one order and the rest of the children the second order.
Conclusions
Found the specific cultural norms children acquire have a direct impact on moral development. Lee et al admits that cognitive factors do play a part in a child's moral development, however not all children develop in the same way. Cultural and societal rules and norms have a significant impact on what action we believe are good and bad.
Internal validity- Demand characteristics were low as they were randomly allocated to the two orders. The researchers could have been measuring the morals of the children as in whether they're likely to commit crime. For example they may see an anti-social behaviour as positive.
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Ethnocentrism: As it is a cross cultural study, Lee et al tried to avoid being ethnocentric however the Canadian children's response could be considered to be the same as all 'western cultures' and the response of the Chinese children could be considered the same as all 'eastern cultures'.